Friday, September 5, 2014

Jacques Rancière, The Philosopher and His Poor

What has philosophy to do with the poor? If, as has often been supposed,
the poor have no time for philosophy, then why have philosophers always
made time for them? Why is the history of philosophy—from Plato to Karl
Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to Pierre Bourdieu—the history of so many
figures of the poor: plebes, men of iron, the demos, artisans, common
people, proletarians, the masses? Why have philosophers made the
shoemaker, in particular, a remarkably ubiquitous presence in this
history? Does philosophy itself depend on this thinking about the poor?
If so, can it ever refrain from thinking for them?Jacques Ranci?re’s The
Philosopher and His Poor meditates on these questions in close readings
of major texts of Western thought in which the poor have played a
leading role—sometimes as the objects of philosophical analysis,
sometimes as illustrations of philosophical argument. Published in
France in 1983 and made available here for the first time in English,
this consummate study assesses the consequences for Marx, Sartre, and
Bourdieu of Plato’s admonition that workers should do “nothing else”
than their own work. It offers innovative readings of these thinkers’
struggles to elaborate a philosophy of the poor. Presenting a left
critique of Bourdieu, the terms of which are largely unknown to an
English-language readership, The Philosopher and His Poor remains
remarkably timely twenty years after its initial publication.